


Night Thoughts in the Barricade

by idgit_with_a_fidget



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: E/R - Freeform, Grantaire thinks about stuff, M/M, On The Barricade, One-Sided Enjolras/Grantaire, Staring, Unrequited Love, apollo - Freeform, enjolras has pretty eyes, grantaire watches enjolras sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 09:11:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idgit_with_a_fidget/pseuds/idgit_with_a_fidget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wide awake on a cold night in the Paris Barricade, Grantaire watches Enjolras sleeping, and starts thinking about all he is thankful for because of the charasmatic revolutionary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Thoughts in the Barricade

Once the candle flames had been blown out and the lamps extinguished, there was no light in the barricade.

Grantaire could hardly make out the shape of Enjolras in the opaque gloom as he lay still and tense on the floor of their camp. Grantaire propped himself up on his elbows, peered again. Only a very weak moon lit the curves and the slopes of the fellow student's outline a soft grey. 

Grantaire was surprised Enjolras had decided to sleep; usually he spent the nights in restless motion. He'd pace, write, plan, stubbornly try to document his frantically passionate thoughts. Sometimes, if he too were suffering queasy bouts of insomnia, Grantaire would find the blonde man gazing fixatedly out of the windows at the lonely cobbled streets and the distant starts, lost so far in his sad, pensive musings. He'd never speak, only glare or stare, that familiar fire a blazing blue heat in his eyes. Grantaire couldn't deny the sickening ache that bloomed in his chest when Enjolras looked at hime like that; it filled him with dread and fear, and crippling realisation that a day would come, a day that could be directly the next, where he would see Enjolras for the last time, see any of his barricade brothers for the last time. 

He listened to the other man's breathing. Even in slumber it wasn't relaxed like tha of the others lying around them, sprawled or curled up tight. It was stifled, quick, stern, and yet it soothed Grantaire's trembling fingers. He felt safe near Enjolras, anchored. Enjolras was the bouy he could cling on to when the oceans of wine got too vast and too choppy. Enjolras gave him something to get excited about, he transferred his fierce enthusiasm into the sluggish and pained thing that was Grantaire's despairing soul. For too long he'd felt useless and alone, stuck wandering through a perpetual fog, aimless and self-destructive, until Enjolras turned on the lights inside him with his words of hope and freedom, and Grantaire would have direction again; his heart would resume beating and his worries would leave him, scattering and dissolving like boogeymen in the sun. Enjolras was the strength and courage Grantaire didn't have. He was self-sacrificing, willing to die for his friends and his country. A god compressed into the form of a curly-haired revolutionary. Grantaire only wished he could embrace the man, feel muscled arms envelop him, cradle his head, whisper away bad thoughts so Grantaire could adsorb the power and life from him.

But Enjolras was not gentle. Despite their aquaintanceship, surely Enjolras saw him as confusion, a drunkard. 

Enjolras would never be gentle with him. 

The night howled its silence. Grantaire had lost all notion of sleep, too embroilled in his own sorrow and self-pity. He watched their fearless and charasmatic leader dozel the rhytmic swell of his chest causing the material of his clothes to sigh contendedly. Grantaire could just about see an arm crooked beneath his ear, supporting his head like a pillow. _What are you thinking of, Enjolras? Not of me; of France? Your only true love... I wonder what we mean to you, your friends._ He tried not to get angry, tried to ignore the fizzing of frustration and impatience in his bones. 

Blue eyes stared back at Grantaire, regarding him in the quiet, and Grantaire's beath hitched in his throat. He cleared it, flushing pink, and stopped breathing. Enjolras just stared, not moving, not saying a word. Neither did. 

France was beautiful in the dark. 

Grantaire was first to blink. _Did you hear me? Was I thinking so loud you could hear me?_ Sudden alarm and panic shot through him. Was it his imagination or did Enjolras nod fractionally? He never so much wanted to know what was running through the blond's mind. They were close. Mere centimetres apart on the floor. If Grantaire was to stretch his hand out a little, he could-

Enjolras was not gentle. He closed his eyes and did not open them.

_My Apollo..._

Enjolras would never be gentle with him.


End file.
